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BP plc
Location: London, Greater London, United Kingdom Founder: William Knox D'Arcy Founded: April 14th, 1909 Key People: Helge Lund (Chairman) Bob Dudley (Group Chief Executive) Bernard Looney (Chief Executive-Designate) More About The Manufacturer: In May 1908 a group of British geologists discovered a large amount of oil at Masjid-i-Suleiman located in the province of Khuzestan. It was the first commercially significant find of oil in the Middle East. William Knox D'Arcy, by contract with Ali-Qoli Khan Bakhtiari, obtained permission to explore for oil for the first time in the Middle East, an event that changed the history of the entire region. The oil discovery led to petrochemical industry development and also the establishment of industries that strongly depended on oil. On 14 April 1909, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) was incorporated as a subsidiary of Burmah Oil Company. Some of the shares were sold to the public. The first chairman and minority shareholder of the company became Lord Strathcona. After World War I, APOC started marketing its products in Continental Europe and acquired stakes in the local marketing companies in several European countries. Refineries were built in Llandarcy in Wales (the first refinery in the United Kingdom) and Grangemouth in Scotland. It also acquired the controlling stake in the Courchelettes refinery in France and formed with the Government of Australia a partnership named Commonwealth Oil Refineries, which built the Australian's first refinery in Laverton, Victoria. In 1923, Burmah employed Winston Churchill as a paid consultant to lobby the British government to allow APOC to have exclusive rights to Persian oil resources, which were subsequently granted by the Iranian monarchy. Following World War II, nationalistic sentiments were on the rise in the Middle East; most notably being Iranian nationalism and Arab Nationalism. In Iran, the AIOC and the pro-western Iranian government led by Prime Minister Ali Razmara resisted nationalist calls to revise AIOC's concession terms in Iran's favor. In March 1951, Razmara was assassinated and Mohammed Mossadeq, a nationalist, was elected as the new prime minister by the Majlis of Iran (parliament). In April 1951, the Iranian government nationalized the Iranian oil industry by unanimous vote, and the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) was formed, displacing the AIOC. The AIOC withdrew its management from Iran, and Britain organized an effective worldwide embargo of Iranian oil. The British government, which owned the AIOC, contested the nationalization at the International Court of Justice at The Hague, but its complaint was dismissed. By the 1960s, British Petroleum had developed a reputation for taking on the riskiest ventures. It earned the company massive profits; it also earned them the worst safety record in the industry. In 1967, the giant oil tanker Torrey Canyon foundered off the English coast. Over 32 million US gallons (760,000 bbl; 120,000 m3) of crude oil were spilled into the Atlantic and onto the beaches of Cornwall and Brittany, causing Britain's worst-ever oil spill. The ship was owned by the Bahamas-based Barracuda Tanker Corporation and was flying the flag of Liberia, a well-known flag of convenience, but was being chartered by British Petroleum. The ship was bombed by RAF jet bombers in an effort to break up the ship and burn off the leaking oil, but this failed to destroy the oil slick. The intensified power struggle between oil companies and host governments in Middle East, along with the oil price shocks that followed the 1973 oil crisis meant British Petroleum lost most of its direct access to crude oil supplies produced in countries that belonged to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and prompted it to diversify its operations beyond the heavily Middle East dependent oil production. In 1976, BP and Shell de-merged its marketing operations in the United Kingdom by dividing Shell-Mex and BP. In 1978, the company acquired a controlling interest in Standard Oil of Ohio (Sohio). Peter Walters was the company chairman from 1981 to 1990. During his period as chairman, he reduced the company's refining capacity in Europe. In 1982, the downstream assets of BP Canada were sold to Petro Canada. In 1984, Standard Oil of California was renamed to Chevron Corporation; and it bought Gulf Oil—the largest merger in history at that time. To meet anti-trust regulations, Chevron divested many of the Gulf's operating subsidiaries and sold some Gulf stations and a refinery in the eastern United States to British Petroleum and Cumberland Farms in 1985. In 1987, British Petroleum negotiated the acquisition of Britoil and the remaining publicly traded shares of Standard Oil of Ohio. In the same year it was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange where its share was traded until delisting in 2008. At the beginning of the 2000s, BP became the leading partner (and later operator) of the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline project which opened a new oil transportation route from the Caspian region. In 2002, BP acquired the majority of Veba Öl AG, a subsidiary of VEBA AG, and subsequently rebranded its existing stations in Germany to the Aral name. As part of the deal, BP acquired also the Veba Öl's stake in Ruhr Öl's joint venture. Ruhr Öl was dissolved in 2016. In 2017, BP announced a planned investment of $200 million to acquire a 43% stake in the solar energy developer Lightsource Renewable Energy, a company that will be renamed Lightsource BP. In March 2017, the company acquired Clean Energy's biomethane business and assets, including its production sites and existing supply contracts. In April 2017, its subsidiary Butamax bought an isobutanol production company Nesika Energy. In July 2018, the company agreed to purchase BHP's shale assets in Texas and Louisiana for $10.5 billion. Also in 2018, BP bought a 16.5% interest in the Clair field in the UK from ConocoPhillips, increasing its share to 45.1%. BP paid £1.3 billion and gave to ConocoPhillips its 39.2% non-operated stake in the Kuparuk River Oil Field and satellite oil fields in Alaska. BP also acquired Chargemaster, which operated the UK's largest electric vehicle charging network. In December 2018, BP sold its wind assets in Texas. Helge Lund succeeded Carl-Henric Svanberg on 1 January 2019 as chairman of BP Plc board of directors. In January 2019, BP discovered 1 billion barrels (160×106 m3) oil at its Thunder Horse location in the Gulf of Mexico. The company also announced plans to spend $1.3 billion one-third of its phase of the Atlantis field near New Orleans. BP in iRacing is quite prominent as the fuel supplier for many of its formula cars like the Dallara F3 and the F1 cars. Category:European Fuel Suppliers Category:British Fuel Suppliers Category:Fuel Suppliers